Ukrainian soldiers fought fierce fighting on Monday in the northeast of their country, trying to fend off an advance by Russian forces who crossed the border last week to open a new line of attack near the city of Kharkiv.
Monday’s Russian airstrikes were hitting Vovchansk, a small town about five miles from the border, according to Denys Yaroslavsky, a Ukrainian officer currently fighting there.
“They are dropping five to seven bombs every three minutes,” Yaroslavsky said in a telephone interview Monday, referring to the Russian bombing.
Vovchansk had a prewar population of about 17,000 people, and local officials have been struggling to evacuate the roughly 200 to 300 remaining residents. Hryhoriy Shcherban, a volunteer who was in Vovchansk on Monday morning, said he had received more than 200 evacuation requests overnight.
“We are driving around trying to find directions. “Russia bombs the evacuation road,” he stated. “You can hear explosions all the time.”
The advance on Vovchansk came after weeks of warnings from Ukrainian officials that Russia was massing forces on the border with the aim of launching a new offensive in the northeast. Those warnings came true early Friday morning, as Russian troops crossed the border along two main lines: one immediately north of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city after the capital kyiv, and the another about 12 miles to the east, around Vovchansk.
Here’s what you should know about the current situation.
Quick profits
The Ukrainian military acknowledged early Monday that Russian forces had seized several settlements in a rapid offensive.
“The enemy is currently achieving tactical success,” the Ukrainian General Staff said in a statement.
So far, Russian forces have managed to capture at least nine villages and settlements, advancing about five kilometers into Ukrainian territory and seizing about 50 square kilometers of land, according to online maps of the battlefield published by the Institute for the Study of Guerra, a Washington organization. -group of experts based on.
Military experts and Ukrainian officials say Russian troops have so far mostly advanced through poorly defended and largely unpopulated territory, explaining the relatively rapid progress. They note that the border in northeastern Ukraine has been subject to regular Russian bombing throughout the war, making it difficult to establish fortified positions and forcing many civilians to flee.
Still, Russian forces are approaching more populated areas and the fighting may increase in intensity. Local authorities have already evacuated nearly 6,000 people since Friday, according to Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv region’s military administration.
What is the OBJETIVE?
Ukrainian forces were already stretched thin trying to defend a 600-mile front line stretching from eastern Kharkiv to the Black Sea city of Kherson. With the new offensive, the Russian military is trying to further strain Ukrainian lines and eventually break through, military experts say.
Franz-Stefan Gady, a Vienna-based military analyst, said Russia was trying to divert Ukrainian troops from the southeastern Donbas region to make it easier for Russian troops to capture territory there.
Russia’s main objective, according to Gady, is to withdraw forces from Chasiv Yar, a Ukrainian stronghold that Russian forces have been attacking for weeks. The city sits on strategic high ground and is key to defending the Ukrainian-controlled part of the Donbas.
Ukraine has already sent reinforcements to the northeast, including from the 92nd Assault Brigade, according to Pasi Paroinen, an analyst at the Black Bird Group, a Finland-based organization that analyzes satellite images and social media content from the battlefield.
That unit has recently been fighting in Chasiv Yar, according to Paroinen, who said it was possible Ukraine had recruited elements of the brigade resting in Kharkiv, its local garrison.
Mykhailo Samus, deputy director of the Ukrainian Center for Army Studies, Conversion and Disarmament, a military research organization in kyiv, said the situation had “stabilized so far,” and Ukrainian forces managed to slow the Russian advance.
But Samus and Paroinen said Russia had yet to send large numbers of troops on the offensive (probably deploying only a few thousand troops) and that much would depend on Moscow’s next move.
What is happening elsewhere?
In recent days, Russian forces have also made marginal gains in southeastern Ukraine, entering the town of Krasnohorivka last week, Ukrainian officials said.
They have also slightly expanded their control over villages surrounding the town of Avdiivka, which fell to Russia in February. Experts say Russian forces could try to leverage their gains in that area to advance further north toward Chasiv Yar, which is about 40 kilometers away, in a pincer movement.
Separately, Russian authorities said Monday that Ukrainian shelling had killed 19 civilians in Russia’s Belgorod region, across the border from Kharkiv.
In a particularly deadly incident, the Russian Defense Ministry said fragments from an intercepted Ukrainian missile had hit an apartment building in the region on Sunday. Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Belgorod, said 15 bodies had been found in the rubble. The claims could not be independently verified; Ukrainian officials denied firing on residential areas.